vengeance; Matt. xvi. 28. Luke xxi. 22. But, though this prophecy must have its accomplishment, there is no necessity of supposing that it has been already accomplished. There are prophecies which intimate a great slaughter of the enemies of God and his people, which remain to be fulfilled: Those in Ezekiel, chap. xxxviii. and in the Revelation of St John, chap. xx. are called Gog and Magog. This prophecy of Isaiah may possibly refer to the same or the like event. We need not be at a loss to determine the person who is here introduced as stained with treading the wine-press, if we consider how St John in the Revelation has applied this image of the Prophet; Rev. xix. 13. 15, 16.: compare chap. xxxiv.

1. I who announce righteousness, and-] A MS has 17, with the demonstrative article added, with greater force and emphasis, The announcer of righteousness. A MS has PT3, without prefixed; and so LXX and Vulg: And thirty-eight MSS (seven ancient) add the conjunction to ; which the LXX, Syr. and Vulg. confirm. 2. Wherefore is thine apparel red-] For , twentynine MSS (nine ancient), and one edition, have a in the plural: so LXX and Syr. And all the ancient versions read it with instead of the first 5. But the true reading is probably in the singular, as in ver. 3.

3. And I have stained-] For NN, a verb of very irregular formation, compounded, as they say, of the two forms of the preterite and future, a MS has NON, the regular future with a pleonastic pronoun added to it, according to the Hebrew idiom: "And all my raiment, I have stained it." The necessity of the verb's being in the past time, seems to have given occasion to the alteration made in the end of the word. The conversive at the beginning of the sentence affects the verb, though not joined to it; of which there are many examples:

ומקרני רמים עניתני

"And thou wilt hear me, (or hear thou me), from among the horns of the unicorns. Psal. xxii. 22.

5. And mine indignation-] For ', nineteen MSS (three ancient), and four editions, have 'PS), and my righteousness; from chap. lix. 16. which, I suppose, the transcriber retained in his memory.

6. And I crushed them] For DN, "and I made them drunken," twenty-seven MSS (three ancient), and

the old edition of 1488, have them" and so Syr. and Chald. this whole line.

), "and I crushed The LXX have omitted

7. The remaining part of this chapter, with the whole chapter following, contains a penitential confession and supplication of the Israelites in their present state of dispersion, in which they have so long marvellously subsisted, and still continue to subsist, as a people-cast out of their country; without any proper form of civil polity or religious worship; their temple destroyed, their city desolated and lost to them; and their whole nation scattered over the face of the earth; apparently deserted and cast off by the God of their fathers, as no longer his peculiar people.

They begin with acknowledging God's great mercies and favours to their nation, and the ungrateful returns made to them on their part; that by their disobedience they had forfeited the protection of God, and had caused him to become their adversary. And now the Prophet represents them, induced by the memory of the great things that God had done for them, as addressing their humble supplication for the renewal of his mercies: They beseech him to regard them in consideration of his former loving-kindness; they acknowledge him for their Father and Creator; they confess their wickedness and hardness of heart; they entreat his forgiveness; and deplore their present miserable condition under which they have so long suffered. It seems designed as a formulary of humiliation for the Israelites, in order to their conversion.

The whole passage is in the elegiac form, pathetic and elegant; but it has suffered much in our present copy by the mistakes of transcribers.

,plural תהלות For

Ibid. the praise of JEHOVAH] twenty-nine MSS (three ancient), and two editions, have

, in the singular number: and so the Vulgate renders it; and one of the Greek versions, in the margin of Cod. Marchal, and in the text of MSS Pachom. and 1. D. II, την αίνεσιν Κυρίου.

8, 9. And he became their Saviour in all their distress→] I have followed the translation of the LXX in the latter part of the 8th and the former part of the 9th verse; which agrees with the present text, a little differently divided, as to the members of the sentence. They read 5, out of all, instead of, in all, which makes no difference in the sense; and they understand as y Και εγένετο αυτοις εις

σωτηρίαν εκ πάσης θλίψεως αυτών ου πρέσβυς, ουδε αγγελος-An angel of his presence means an angel of superior order, in immediate attendance upon God. So the angel of the Lord says to Zacharias, "I am Gabriel, that stands in the presence of God;" Luke i. 19. The presence of JEHOVAH, Exod. xxxiii. 14, 15. and the angel, Exod. xxiii. 20, 21. is JEHOVAH himself: here, an angel of his presence is opposed to JEHOVAH himself; as an angel is in the following passages of the same book of Exodus. After their idolatrous worshipping of the golden calf," when God had said to Moses, I will send an angel before thee-I will not go up in the midst of thee the people mourned," Exod. xxxiii. 2-4. God afterwards comforts Moses by saying, " My presence (that is, I myself in person, and not by an angel) will go with thee," ver. 14. auтos пgoпogevσoμaι σou, as the LXX render it.

The MSS and editions are much divided between the two readings of the text and margin in the common copies, and . All the ancient versions express the chetib . Ibid. And he took them up, and he bare them] See the note on chap. xlvi. 3.

10. And he fought against them] ancient), and the first edition, with

.והוא, junction

Twenty-six MSS (ten another, add the con

11. How he brought them up from the sea with the shepherd of his flock; How-] For N, how, interrogative, twice, the Syriac version reads TN, how, without interrogation; as that particle is used in the Syriac language, and sometimes in the Hebrew. See Ruth iii. 18. Eccles. ii. 16.

Ibid. Moses his servant-] For y, his people, two MSS (one of them ancient), and the old edition of 1488, and Syr. read 17y, his servant. These two words have been mistaken one for the other in other places: Psal. lxxviii. 71. and lxxx. 5. for 1 and Ty, the LXX read

עבדך and עבדי

Ibid. —the shepherd of his flock] That is, Moses. The MSS and editions vary in this word: some have it in the singular number; so LXX, Syr. Chald.; others y, plural.

14. The spirit of Jehovah conducted them] For л, caused him to rest, the LXX have wonynov aurous, conducted them. They read on: Syr. Chald. Vulg. read 'nın, conducted him. Two MSS have the word without the in the middle.

15. -and thy mighty power] For 77, plural, thirty

two MSS (seven ancient), and seven editions, have, singular.

Ibid. —are they restrained from us], For, from (or in regard to) me, LXX and Syr. read , from us.

16. O deliver us for the sake of thy name] The present text reads, as our translation has rendered it, "Our Redeemer, thy name is from everlasting." But instead of

oby, from everlasting, an ancient MS has y, for the sake of, which gives a much better sense. To show the impropriety of the present reading, it is sufficient to observe, that the LXX and Syriac translators thought it necessary to add y, upon us, to make out the sense; that is, "Thy name is upon us, or we are called by thy name, from of old." And the LXX have rendered in the imperative mood, ξυσαι ἡμας.

18. It is little that they have taken possession of thy holy mountain] The difficulty of the construction in this place is acknowledged on all hands. Vitringa prefers that sense as the least exceptionable, which our translation has expressed: in which however there seems to me to be a great defect; that is, the want of what in the speaker's view must have been the principal part of the proposition, the object of the verb, the land, or it, as our translators supply it; which surely ought to have been expressed, and not to have been left to be supplied by the reader. In a word, I believe there is some mistake in the text. And here the LXX help us out: they had in their copy, mountain, instead of Dy, people; Του οξους του ἁγιου σου. "Not only our enemies have taken possession of Mount Sion, and trodden down thy sanctuary; even far worse than this has befallen us: Thou hast long since utterly cast us off; and dost not consider us as thy peculiar people."

CHAPTER XLIV.

2.-the dry fuel-] D'. "It means dry stubble, and the root is DO," says Rabbi Jonah, apud Sal. ben Melec in loc. Which is approved by Schultens, Orig. Hebr. p. 30.

"The fire kindling the stubble does not seem like enough to the melting of the mountains to be brought as a simile to it.

Quid si sic?

That the mountains might flow down at thy presence!

As the fire of things smelted burneth,

As the fire causeth the waters to boil

There is no doubt of the Hebrew words of the second line bearing that version:" DR JUBB.

I submit these different interpretations to the reader's judgment. For my own part, I am inclined to think that the text is much corrupted in this place. The ancient versions have not the least traces of either of the above interpretations. The LXX and Syr. agree exactly together in rendering this line by, "As the wax melteth before the fire," which can by no means be reconciled with the present

ימסו reads המסים text. Vulg. for

Ibid. That the nations-] For , the nations, four MSS (one of them ancient) have D, the mountains.

4. For never have men heard-] St Paul is generally supposed to have quoted this passage of Isaiah, 1 Cor. ii. 9.; and Clemens Romanus, in his first epistle, has made the same quotation, very nearly in the same words with the apostle. But the citation is so very different both from the Hebrew text and the version of LXX, that it seems very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile them by any literal emendation, without going beyond the bounds of temperate criticism. One clause, "neither hath it entered into the heart of man," (which, by the way, is a phrase purely Hebrew, by by, and should seem to belong to the Prophet), is wholly left out; and another is repeated without force or propriety, viz. "nor perceived by the ear," after "never have heard:" and the sense and expression of the apostle is far preferable to that of the Hebrew text. Under these difficulties, I am at a loss what to do better than to offer to the reader this, perhaps disagreeable, alternative: Either to consider the Hebrew text and LXX in this place as wilfully disguised and corrupted by the Jews; of which practice, in regard to other quotations in the New Testament from the Old, they lie under strong suspicions; (see Dr Owen on the Version of the Seventy, sect. vi.-ix.); or to look upon St Paul's quotation as not made from Isaiah, but from one or other of the two apocryphal books entitled, The Ascension of Esaiah, and The Apocalyps of Elias, in both of which this passage was found; and the apostle is by some supposed in other places to have quoted such apocryphal writings. As the first of these conclusions will perhaps not easily be admitted by many; so I must fairly warn my readers, that the second is treated by Jerom as little better than heresy. See his comment on this place of Isaiah.